Review: “By Nightfall” by Michael Cunningham

To my mind, Michael Cunningham’s novel, “By Nightfall,” has
one significant flaw, namely that the New York City he cares and writes so
passionately about ends at the borders of Manhattan. He describes Battery Park,
for example, where Manhattan abuts New York harbor, as, “the city’s only point
of contact with something bigger and more potent than itself.” Has he never
heard of or visited Coney Island, that somewhat storied strand along the
Atlantic Ocean? Of course, that point of contact between the city and something
bigger involves going to Brooklyn, which, like the other boroughs, is, for
Cunningham and his characters, only vaguely and remotely New York City.
Cunningham’s not even sure those places are certifiably American.

When Peter, the Manhattan art gallery owner who is the
book’s main character, does set foot in Bushwick, Brooklyn, to visit an
artist’s studio, he can think of nothing but an “Eastern European city” to
compare it to. How odd, since whatever relationship Brooklyn may bear to
Warsaw, say, or Budapest, it, and the city’s other boroughs, are precisely aspects
and foundations of New York City itself.

That’s one quibble. Now the other caveat. Together the two
help map the intellectual/geographical territory the book intensely and
intelligently inhabits. Rebecca, Peter’s wife, says of a career path her
troubled brother Ethan (nicknamed Mizzy), has proposed: “Computer Graphics.
Don’t ask me what that is, exactly. In terms of how it could actually be a
job.”

Rebecca and Peter are a married team in the thick of New
York culture, she in publishing, a field not exactly exempt from the digital
revolution. In a novel published this year and au courant in so many ways, for
Rebecca to be clueless about how computer graphics might just imply a career
path is even more jarring a false note than for Peter to act as if there were
no New York beaches.

That said, within the confines of Manhattan’s artworld, its
true locus, “By Nightfall” comes alive in ways that more than compensate for
its border problems.

Cunningham knows how to put his readers in front of
contemporary art works, affording them opportunity to see, mull over, doubt,
and perhaps, in the end, despite all doubts, succumb. Early on in the book
Peter and Bette, an older, more established gallery owner, pay a visit to the
Metropolitan Museum. Peter notes how quickly they march past the art of Rodin,
whose works are, “part of history, but new artists don’t revere him, no one
makes a pilgrimage, you learn about him in school, you pass his sculptures and
maquettes on your way to see the Damien Hirst exhibit”. And it is in fact
Damien Hirst’s 13 foot pickled shark they visit.

“And there it
is, the shark,” Cunningham writes, “suspended in its pale blue, strangely
lovely formaldehyde. . . the lethal perfection of its shape. . . its maw,
jagged, big as a barrelhead.” Bette chooses this visit to confide to Peter that
she has cancer, perhaps more advanced than she cares to admit. She intends to
give up her gallery, and would like to bequeath to Peter one of her most
promising young artists. This confession, however, much as it affects Peter, does
not bring their contemplation of the shark to an end. Bette adds: “You let
yourself think, oh, it’s a gesture, it’s just a dead shark, every natural
history museum is full of them, but then you stand in a gallery with it, and,
well. . . ”

This interchange exemplifies themes that Cunningham deftly
summons up and balances throughout the book. Peter is alert to how, when it
comes to art, setting is far from neutral: it not only frames but comes
disturbingly close to calling art into being. Consider, as Bette does, the
difference between seeing a shark as a zoological specimen and coming on it
just steps away from acclaimed statues by Rodin. Later, Peter muses: “Although
gallery people don’t like to talk about it, even among themselves, this is one
of the problems that can arise — the simple fact that in a hushed white room
with polished concrete floors, almost anything looks like art.”

For Peter, the unmerited power of these hushed white rooms
can only be fully neutralized by works of such genius that they defy setting
and transcend framing. His hunt for art on that order leads Uta, his gallery
assistant, to reflect that Peter too easily forgets that “he is unambiguously
in the art business.” Silently she
upbraids him: “Do you understand, crazy
old Peter Harris, do you understand that genius is rare?”

Some of the fantastically wealthy collectors Peter deals with
— some connected to and eager to impress even more wealthy Chinese
multi-billionaires — like to test-run artworks out on their estates. If a piece
does not burnish this room or that expansive garden, if it does not add to a
particular outdoor view of Long Island Sound, it is returned. This is the way business
is done, and Peter cannot challenge it. But in his heart, he believes that: “A
real work of art should rule the room, and the clients should call up not to
complain about the art but to say that the art has helped them understand how
the room is all a horrible mistake.”

Peter’s problems arise when he finds in Mizzy, Rebecca’s
brother, who has recently, in his vagabond way, turned up on their doorstep,
someone with the power to make him conceive of his life so far — including
heterosexuality, marriage, and parenting — as a horrible mistake. Cunningham
writes that: “Mizzy is becoming. . . [Peter’s] favorite work of art, a
performance piece if you will, and Peter wants to collect him. . . to curate
Mizzy.”

Whether Peter does choose wayward and alluring Mizzy, with
his “sorrowful eyes” and “impossible grandeur,” over Rebecca, who suspects
nothing of what’s begun to happen between her husband and her brother, must to
be left to the reader to discover. I will only note that the book concludes
with a surprising force that drives away any preciosity or superficiality left
over from hushed white rooms.

Cunningham’s writes about Manhattan’s art world with canny
insight and sympathy. “By Nightfall” discusses the sorts of shows that have
since been mounted, at times amid controversy. Cunningham won’t get you to the
beach but he’s splendid to be with in the museums and the galleries. What makes
the book more than a finely tuned insider’s art guide is that that Cunningham
anchors his story not only in beauty, as it is constantly reconceived and
imagined, but in considerations of love, sex, morality and mortality. The novel
is an accomplishment and a pleasure to read.